Recently I returned from a particle physics experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institut, a nuclear research lab in Switzerland. I was one of ten students from the University of Heidelberg and ETH, Zürich who had two weeks of (nearly) free reign to carry out an experiment on the PSI’s proton beam line. To put into perspective how crazy that is, ordinarily the going rate for such a privilege is €10,000s per day!
Our goal was to measure a mysterious number called the “Panofsky ratio”. The ratio is named after Wolfgang Panofsky, first to attempt to measure it, and corresponds is the relative likelihood of two events involving particles called protons and pions occurring. It is important, because historically its value strongly contradicted the expectation of theoretical physicists. The two processes occur by means of two different forces — one by the weak interaction and the other by QED — and so the ratio was expected to be somewhere near the ratio of strengths of these interactions, give or take a few corrections, which happens to be around 30 Continue reading
That passwords are a hassle is a given. They’re a pain to think up and a pain to remember. If you’re anything like me you’ve probably got two or three of varying degrees of strength which you use for everything. But really, you know this isn’t the best solution. 
If you’re a part-time developer or you don’t use your computer exclusively for web development, it makes sense for you not slowing things down with Apache and MySql every time you boot up.